The Decline of FFXI: Forums, Gameplay and Nostalgia

[RaenRyong]

And I understand that you don't see Abyssea as a problem, but some of us do. Just because you don't give a $#!% about DEPTH and DYNAMICS, doesn't mean that others share similar thoughts.

No, I just understand game mechanics well enough that I can tell you that there was no greater depth or dynamics at 75 in the majority of instances.

The only real difference nowadays is that you require less people on a fight-to-fight basis. Needing bodies doesn't add any depth. If SE added an NM tomorrow which was just a standard crab mob but unless you had 18 people it wouldn't take any damage, you wouldn't call it a fight with a great amount of depth, I hope.

Dynamis Lord: zerg
Proto-Omega: absolute joke.
Proto-Ultima: standard tank affair, make sure your tank(s) have an MDT setup.
Genbu: lol.
Seiryu: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.
Suzaku: standard tank affair or RDM it to death. Eat or kite 2hr.
Byakko: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.
Kirin: zerg or kite while you kill adds, then kill it.
Almost all Jailers are more of the same. Love/Prudence are somewhat different.
Faf/Nid/Behe/KB/Ada/Aspid are all and were all easy and easily killable lowman, though you wouldn't see this because of the claim system. Not much depth in these either.
Wyrms: tank on ground, equip mdt set in air. Kite away adds.
Vrtra has depth if you don't zerg it.

I'm not seeing the great amount of depth here. That's not to say that Abyssea fights are the most profound monster battles ever created, but I think you have a serious case of the rose-tinted glasses.

[Sparthos]

I think things such as Assault, Nyzul, Einherjar, Dynamis and Salvage qualify as better examples.

There was simply more variety between events which Abyssea lacks. Assaults had different quirks, Nyzul had the random factor going for it, Einherjar was a legitimate higher-manned event (I still hated it), Dynamis had pulls that made people feel all special inside and also was a higher-manned event (i hated it but some people enjoyed ventrilo with this).

Abyssea basically negated the entire game worth of content. Everything converging on one place removes the dynamic factor. Lights were an interesting quirk until SE went overboard with the zone-wide buffs in Heroes areas that basically do half the work for you.

While I completely agree that most of old XI was basically mindless zerging or shouting at the PC cause nothing dropped, the variety was welcome and given the future of the game we're unlikely to ever see such variety again.

[RaenRyong]

I'll agree with that.

[Karbuncle]

I think we'll see that variety again some time soon.

Gotta also remember while We did have Salvage, Einherjar, etc at 75 for a while, We were 75 for a very long time, it took SE years to give us all that variety of content.

Right now we're level 90, we keep thinking about it as "Above 75" when we should be thinking about it as "Level 65 compared to 75". Since in reality the new cap will be 99.

When we hit 99, I'm sure there will be a lot of Variety in end-game activities eventually. FFXI Endgame wasn't built in a day, and while Abyssea is one event, it was a refresh change of pace over old-FFXI with A LOT to do. Quests, Mission bosses, multiple NMs, the Exp, Dominion Ops, Bastion(LoL?), Bastion Ops, etc. While I know and hope Abyssea will end, Its a transitional period, We'll have variety again soon :O

[Ravenmore]

Seiryu: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.
Suzaku: standard tank affair or RDM it to death. Eat or kite 2hr.
Byakko: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.

Rng shadow bind work just as well (excluding Byakko lol two hour) if poeple listened and is better if your lowmaning and have more then one pop or plainning on doing all of them in one nite.

[Anewie]

I would ignore Olor. He's stated himself he has no experience with anything endgame, not even abyssea. He has no clue what its like.

[Catsby]

The reason why the forums are in such a terrible state is because they were introduced way too late. That much is obvious. The reason they weren't introduced sooner isn't as clear. When I spoke to a community manager about it at GDC he said the company(didn't specific who) wanted forums to be in the hands of the community. The cynic in me says this was a managerial style cost reduction method combined with insular thinking of a Japanese company. We can see what good it did to both the community and the game. We have a bunch of mouthy pissed off people with terrible ideas and a game that is stuck in the previous generation of console hardware.

Hopefully the community managers actually reading these forums will find a way to put the frustration and angst into a tangible form for the people making decisions to see (often referred to as "the breaks").

[Akujima]

How does a job becoming a bandwagon effect how you play the job in any way shape or form?

I was overlooking this thread, and I had to comment on this particular quote. Recently in other threads, I've been discussing balance when it comes to jobs. So in one aspect, this quote makes sense. But in another, this quote is completely biased.

Jobs becoming "bandwagon" doesn't affect that particular job. It affects other jobs.

It brings imbalance to the game. This imbalance causes favoritism amongst the player base, and this favoritism towards jobs, causes them to exclude other people from events/battles/quests, etc, simply because they do not have the "required job".

I know the cliche thing to say is... "Well then go level a useful job". But this not the answer, and this is where FFXI fails, where MMO's like WoW succeed.

At the risk of being flamed for bringing World of Warcraft to the discussion, Blizzard did not consider that people would play more than 1 character/class/job when the game was developed. They created each Class with the understanding that everyone should be included, regardless of whatever race/class/role they play.

FFXI's past and current trends of "bandwagon jobs/subjobs" seek to create so much imbalance, that any further development without the consideration of "all things being equal", will upset a mass majority of the player base that are either new/returning or simply like the job they play because of nostalgia/role-play reasons.

People didn't level the job they like, only to have everyone around them say "Oh... Didn't you know? That job sucks".

[Yinnyth]

No, I just understand game mechanics well enough that I can tell you that there was no greater depth or dynamics at 75 in the majority of instances.

The only real difference nowadays is that you require less people on a fight-to-fight basis. Needing bodies doesn't add any depth. If SE added an NM tomorrow which was just a standard crab mob but unless you had 18 people it wouldn't take any damage, you wouldn't call it a fight with a great amount of depth, I hope.

Dynamis Lord: zerg
Proto-Omega: absolute joke.
Proto-Ultima: standard tank affair, make sure your tank(s) have an MDT setup.
Genbu: lol.
Seiryu: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.
Suzaku: standard tank affair or RDM it to death. Eat or kite 2hr.
Byakko: standard tank affair or RDM it to death.
Kirin: zerg or kite while you kill adds, then kill it.
Almost all Jailers are more of the same. Love/Prudence are somewhat different.
Faf/Nid/Behe/KB/Ada/Aspid are all and were all easy and easily killable lowman, though you wouldn't see this because of the claim system. Not much depth in these either.
Wyrms: tank on ground, equip mdt set in air. Kite away adds.
Vrtra has depth if you don't zerg it.

I'm not seeing the great amount of depth here. That's not to say that Abyssea fights are the most profound monster battles ever created, but I think you have a serious case of the rose-tinted glasses.

Many of the CoP battles had depth back before the cap was raised. Diabolos Heart, Diamond, Spade, and Club was also a very well designed battle. AV has depth, but no one has the pressure suit required to go to that depth (without zerging him). The sad thing is the greatest battles SE has ever designed either weren't designed to be repeated(missions), have no substantial reward(Dynamis-Tav), or were way beyond the scope of possibility (oldschool AV and PW).

VNMs were pretty well done, I think. A little easy now that the level cap has been raised and 25% of players have an empyrean, but just take a look at Yilbegan's wiki page. Tons of info in there, and they're still missing some stuff such as his shadow, and his mini rages.

Salvage was brilliant, though again, too easy now. And to be fair, it also suffered from old-dynamis-syndrome where you could do an awesome run, yet get zilch.

[Dart]

I think things such as Assault, Nyzul, Einherjar, Dynamis and Salvage qualify as better examples.

There was simply more variety between events which Abyssea lacks. Assaults had different quirks, Nyzul had the random factor going for it, Einherjar was a legitimate higher-manned event (I still hated it), Dynamis had pulls that made people feel all special inside and also was a higher-manned event (i hated it but some people enjoyed ventrilo with this).

Abyssea basically negated the entire game worth of content. Everything converging on one place removes the dynamic factor. Lights were an interesting quirk until SE went overboard with the zone-wide buffs in Heroes areas that basically do half the work for you.

While I completely agree that most of old XI was basically mindless zerging or shouting at the PC cause nothing dropped, the variety was welcome and given the future of the game we're unlikely to ever see such variety again.

I really wish that they would bring back a salvage type event. That took some planning/people knowing what the hell to do. and it was challanging/fun. Well to me it was.